I'm finally finishing this story, and starting with editing the original chapters. This story will also be posted in Archive of our Own.
Waking up had never been a peaceful trance for Mitchell.
Maybe years before his recruitment, when he was just a boy and then a young man in Ireland, but that life had been far too dead and gone for those memories to be clear enough to trust.
No, waking up had never been peaceful, even less since he got himself clean.
Coming out of deep sleep, when vertigo kicks in and the dream starts morphing into reality, was the absolute worst.
Mitchell knew he did a bad thing. That much was clear, and the realization petrified him.
He stopped himself from opening his eyes and tried to avoid the habitual non-needed breath. In his throat, he could still feel the ache of the previous night's thirst. It hadn't happened suddenly, it had been steadily growing in the past weeks, and he could tell by how his hands shook every time he tried to light up a fag.
It all came to a halt the night before, with the stench from the ambulance arriving as he was leaving work: a carnage, one not caused by his kind, for a change. A train had derailed, and the smell of blood impregnated everything as he was leaving the hospital.
Mitchell had managed to get close to home, repeating mentally the steps left until he could get inside and lock the door and throw away the key.
'Just three more blocks, just turn the corner, just get to the door.'
He had been welcomed by a block party on that unusual warm night, and his head pounded by the thundering flow in their rich blue veins when he turned the corner.
He had come this far to achieve humanity, and this was where he would lose it all. He was indeed someone else's toy, he thought with disdain.
His only balm was knowing that George wouldn't be there to see it all happen, as he was supposed to spend the night at Nina's, and Annie had taken to wander the streets at night.
With some luck, she'd be away as well.
'Three steps more and maybe I'll make it,' he dared wish, but in his blurred sight, he saw a figure coming his way; it was that heavy-set man from around the corner, who lived in the house with the chipped green paint. Mitchell panicked and sprinted the last two steps. A hand in a fingerless glove managed to fish for a key, but the tremors would never let it reach its slot.
Everything was lost.
He could feel fangs descending and eyes darkening with proverbial red.
'Oh God, forgive me,' he thought, and as he was about to turn, the door opened, and Annie's image broke the spell.
He didn't remember how, but he had made it inside.
Annie must have helped him, but right then, as he was stirring in his bed, he couldn't remember exactly how. Her face had been contorted with worry, that much he remembered. For a moment, Mitchell had thought that it was Annie who had been shaking him, trying to get him to snap out of his trance. He had looked down at his hands and noticed that it wasn't her, but him; his hands still shook, and he crumbled to the floor, taking her down.
Outside, the blood kept calling with its siren's song.
"Lock me away! Please! Don't let me do this!" he pleaded.
Annie must have been on her way out and decided to use the door at the last minute. She had always liked street fairs, the mess of the crowds making her forget she couldn't be seen. Mitchell knew it made her feel alive again, as she tried to pretend.
Annie must have opened the door and find him there, and his eyes had yelled silently at her.
Mitchell didn't need to plead anymore. She took him upstairs, dragging him as well as she could, and she locked the door without letting go of him. She wouldn't have been able to do much to stop him if he finally gave in to the lust of blood. His fear flowed freely out of the fingertips, reaching out to her and letting it course into her own veins. The pure panic was so intense that for a moment, Mitchell wondered if her eyes were darkened as well. Annie let go with one hand, and he clamped his orphaned one on her arm, afraid to drown without her support. But her hand had just traveled up to his cheek, placing the full palm on his face to try to convey whatever peace she had left. Soon another hand followed, and she wrapped herself around the trembling vampire.
That had been the last thing Mitchell could remember up to that moment with his eyes tightly shut, afraid to face what he had done.
At last, when he had breathed in, there was no rust in the air, mocking him with the aftermath of his surely unforgivable deeds. Instead, the air was clean of the evil he feared. He was still in his room, and thank God, the demon in his flesh seemed to have been tamed. He dared open an eye, and the dim light from the window hurt his sensitive sight. He turned away before trying once more.
Annie was lying on his bed, facing away, and for the first time, she looked truly dead to him. He would have wailed if he didn't know better. She was there, as always, but gone was her eternal grey. In the twilight of the early hours, in the dull shadows of the Bristol morning, the nude skin of her back was a warm caramel, instead.
At last, the familiar stab of his crimes hollowed him. He had done the unthinkable, indeed.
Just not what he had feared. Mitchell may not have spilled blood the previous night, but he had once again sullen what was pure and good.
Annie remained motionless and silent on his bed.
Annie had not fallen asleep.
She hadn't been able since falling down the stairs.'No, not fallen, pushed,' she had to remind herself. If Annie had to be truthful, she would have to say that she had never tried to sleep because she feared what would be like waking up to her dead reality. Annie was deadly scared of relieving that first realization of having died.
No, she had not fallen asleep after what happened with Mitchell the night before, but she had gone somewhere because time had passed without her knowledge. She had seemed to disappear from the Earth for a few moments or hours.
Something had pulled her from her trance. The soft movement of the mattress beneath her let her know that Mitchell was finally awake. She felt him sit up on the bed, and she feared that soon they'd have to talk about what had transpired, but words were furtive things she didn't seem to be able to catch just then.
The soft breeze from the open window made her aware of her nakedness. Annie felt drunk with the almost forgotten feeling of the bareness of her skin and mortified at the reminder that Mitchell was looking at her as vulnerable as she would ever be.
Mitchell couldn't form words.
He looked at her unmovable back, and he felt ashamed and fearful to see her face.
'Please don't let her be tainted by me… Please don't let her eyes be swollen with sorrow and regret… Please don't let her be hollow… Please don't let her finally be truly dead and ghostly and devoid of the life she had stubbornly refused to give up on after her death,' he pleaded and begged to someone, or something he wasn't entirely sure existed, or if it did, Mitchell was more than sure would not listen to him.
It didn't take long for the memories of what had transpired to slowly flood both of their brains.
It was a portentous revelation of the power of Annie's touch: if Mitchell's demons could pour out of him and into her, she could as well pour herself back inside of him. The idea had clicked in her brain, all mad and magical at the same time.
Annie had placed her forehead on his and her hands on his neck. She made sure her body was flushed against his body, and she concentrated. Annie sang to Mitchell with her skin, and little by little, the fire started to recede, but it wasn't enough. Annie then rubbed his face with her cheek, and she placed small kisses on his jaw, and his ears, and she inhaled his hair, all smoke from his cigarettes, and life and pure him. Her nose traced soft patterns on his stubble, and all throughout, his eyes remained open and frightened on her. Before they knew it, the roles had reversed: He was, but a child scared to the bone of the dark, and she was as old as the Earth.
The need for contact grew as his eyes learned to trust her, still dark, still monster-like. Annie's lips had reached the corner of his mouth, and his bare fingers tried to dig into the flesh of the small of her back. She peeled the layers off of him to garner more area for their skins to touch, for her calmness to reach him. Her soft full lips soon ran out for places to kiss on his face but his lips.
Their mouths' contact didn't faze her; it was part of the healing ritual she was performing, making it up as she went. She had been busy focusing her energy to wonder why the cage of the clothing she died in was so easily shed. It would be many hours later that she would wonder about it, and how natural it all had been. Never before had she so easily stripped for someone else: lovers, doctors, and locker-room mates alike. It had always been awkward and clumsy, leaving her cheeks feeling aflame.
Once bare, she had covered him with her body, embraced the monster with her arms and her legs. Like a once-in-a-lifetime-blooming flower, she opened and swallowed him whole to keep safe. She saw a new fear in his eyes and reassured him with her own.
"It's okay," her mouth hummed on his, and he felt blind in the dark despite his heightened senses.
Mitchell fumbled blindly, surely more akin to his first time, more than a hundred years before, with a lass, whose name he couldn't remember. There was no finesse and no conscious thought, but replacing one hunger with another.
Annie felt him enter her. He may have been the skilled century-old predator, but at that moment, it was she, with her very brief experience in comparison, who had to take the lead. Surely Mitchell knew how to seduce and touch a woman, even if just for the reward of her blood, but right then with her, he was but a nearly dead man finding water to calm his thirst.
The decision to give herself complete had been easy. Annie felt needed with an urgency she never felt before, and just like her tea, she gave her body and soul generously without so much of a second thought. Gone was her stoicism during sex. She moved against him as an equal, and she was vocal as she had never permitted herself to be. Annie felt the wave come as his fangs traced circles on the skin of her neck. Feeling the need to let him merge with her even more, she whispered permission in his ear, just like a substitute mother who wouldn't deny her breast to a crying infant suckle and self-soothe, sadly knowing that no life liquid would flow out. Mitchell's demons spilled from his fangs then, piercing her ghostly skin.
Some need, at last, was appeased, and his fangs retracted. Mitchell lifted his head to look at her, and at the consent that had been given. Neither of them was truly alive, but for a moment, what they were doing ceased to have anything to do with the sorrowful lives of vampires and ghosts. They were simply a woman and a man, joint in their search for pleasure.
When the wave finally broke for both, her eyes didn't close as they usually did. She rode that wave unapologetically, looking into Mitchell's human irises equally full of wonder and dread. Finally, both sets of eyes had closed, and Mitchell let her peace guide him to slumber, and she went into her trance.
At last, his chest exhaled the relief of the massacre avoided as Annie had allowed all of his darkness to take her instead. Mitchell feared the repercussions, he feared having killed her resilience and lovely naiveté, but he was grateful for the sacrifice she had performed. He would never be able to repay her for the gift she had given him: to retain his soul.
"Could… You turn around, please?" Annie said, finally breaking the silence.
Mitchell was relieved to hear her speak, and saddened by what he interpreted as her shame.
"Sure," he replied. "Annie, I'm… Jesus!" he fumbled with his words.
"It's fine," she interrupted, not ready to go there just yet. "I just need to put on my clothes."
Mitchell turned around and found himself smiling at the sweetness of her innocence, and thanking the abandoned God of his youth for that small mercy, that somehow had managed to make his non-beating heart bleed. Mitchell thought that it was so much like Annie to ask him to turn around to cover her nudity, after what he had seen.
After where he had been.
The images and the sensations forever seared into the most inner tenderness of his chest.
And so, like Eve and Adam before them, they covered their bodies in silence, with the regret of knowing they had just been cast out of Paradise.
With his pants on and nothing more, and only once he deemed it was enough time for her, he stood and turned around. Her tank top and leggings were on again, and she was slipping the grey knitted boots back on.
"Listen, Annie. I'm so-," he started to say.
"Don't mention it," Annie interrupted him, standing up and circling the bed until she was at a safe distance.
"What you did last night. I would have… If not…," he tried once more, needing her to know that she had saved him and save them all.
"I know," she reiterated. "Don't beat yourself up for this."
Annie knew him too well, better perhaps than himself.
"It's just-," Mitchell attempted again.
"Shhh," Annie silenced him with her finger on his lips.
The slam of the front door and George's happy steps on the stairs interrupted their moment, and whatever it was that it would have led to.
"That's George," Annie said, looking startled. "I better go."
"Thank you," Mitchell said, trying to say more but finding only those words suitable.
And without thinking, she replied, "Any time."
Mitchell saw her cringe at her choice of words, and she disappeared embarrassed about their implication.
If anything, he loved that, the way her blunder had brought them some sense of normalcy.
It brought a smile to Mitchell's lips.